Working meeting with Healthcare Minister Veronika Skvortsova

Vladimir Putin had a working meeting with Healthcare Minister Veronika Skvortsova to discuss the healthcare situation, including development prospects, current issues and possible solutions. The meeting was part of preparations for an upcoming
Russian Popular Front forum.

August 31, 2015

15:15

Sochi

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Ms Skvortsova, you know that the Russian Popular Front will examine the healthcare system’s development at its
upcoming conference. We agreed to meet before this event to discuss the sector’s development and look at the problems and proposed solutions. Please,
go ahead.

Healthcare Minister Veronika SkvortsovaSkvortsova VeronikaMinister of Healthcare: Yes, Mr
President, the upcoming conference is a good reason to once again analyse the overall situation. By coincidence, several major sociological surveys were
completed in July, and they gave us further material for analysing different
aspects of the medical system and the healthcare sector in general.

The biggest
survey covered more than 90,000 people throughout the country, giving us a very
representative picture. The results showed that more people are satisfied now
with the state of the medical system and healthcare. The number of satisfied
people came to 40.4 percent, which is 10.5 percent higher than in 2006, and 5
percent higher than in 2012. People were increasingly satisfied with all types
of medical care, but the figures were highest for local general practitioners
and emergency services.

The differences were quite big from one region to another. The highest figure was
61.5 percent and the lowest figure was 23 percent. Overall, the trend is good,
and we are pleased to see this, but at the same time, we realise that there is
still a lot of work to do to improve the situation.

In July
2015, the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) conducted another big survey. This
foundation has the longest experience at carrying out surveys of this kind, and its results confirm those of the other survey. In July 2015, 45 percent of respondents said they were happy with the healthcare system. In 2012, the figure was 31 percent, and in 2006, it was 26 percent.

Among other
points I would note the following: for a long time, quite a large number of people gave a negative assessment of the current state of affairs in the healthcare sector, but this figure has almost halved since 2011, falling from
58 percent to 32 percent. The second point I would note is a considerable
increase in people’s trust in state-run medical organisations. This figure has
increased from 52 percent to 65 percent. This year, 81 percent of people turned
to state healthcare establishments, and of course, everyone prefers the system
of free medical care within the compulsory medical insurance framework.

Looking at the quality of medical assistance – diagnosis and treatment – the figures here
are also high, and have gone up from 78 percent to 93–95 percent.

One
question that produced interesting results was whether people give priority to the quality of medical assistance, even if it means travelling to another
region or town to get the specialised treatment needed, or to having access to medical services locally. Fifty-five percent of people, regardless of whether
they live in cities or the countryside, give priority to the quality of medical
care.

Accessibility
of medical care was the subject of a special analysis. More than 88 percent of respondents said that they receive primary outpatient and clinical medical care
locally (55 percent) or within 30 minutes by transport. Nearly 80 percent of respondents said that waiting times for scheduled treatment at clinics and visits to specialist doctors do not exceed the regulation times. We introduced
these waiting time regulations in 2013 and made them compulsory in 2014.

The final
aspect I want to note regards fee-paying and free medicine. There were two
questions here. The first was “Did you pay for medical care last time you saw a doctor?” Here, 82–88 percent of respondents answered “No.” When asked if they
have paid for medical care in the past, 46 percent of respondents said “Yes”,
and 40 percent of this total paid officially.

This is a separate issue that we are examining very closely. Acting on your instruction,
over the last 1.5 years, we have been actively informing the public about which
services should be free and what is covered by the state guarantee system.

We have
also toughened up our checks. The Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare and the Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance
Fund revealed around
1.5 million violations last year, concerning cases of people having to pay
upfront for what the state has already paid for. But this is not a big figure –
0.1 percent of 1.5 billion visits to healthcare establishments.

Finally,
according to the survey results, the number of people who take a responsible
attitude to their own health and look after themselves has increased by 20
percent since 2012. This is the respondents’ own assessment. The number of people who consider themselves to be in good health has also increased by 12
percent.

When we
analysed the results from all the surveys, we saw that the same issues came up
in all of them as being of most concern to the population. The three biggest
concerns are having access to primary medical care in rural and remote areas,
being able to receive good quality free medical care in hospitals in the event
of serious illness, and access to an affordable and broad range of medicines.

With your
permission, I will give a brief account of each of these three issues, what we
have done, what problems remain, and what we plan to do over the coming period.